1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed generally to telephone systems. More specifically, the present invention is directed to an apparatus, method and system of providing auto-dimming and state transition signal functionality to telephone systems. Note that the term “telephone systems” is used to include cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) or any hand-held device with a screen that runs on battery and/or that may be used in a public environment.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, many new features have been added to telephone systems. These features include PDA functionality (for non-PDA devices), Web browsing functionality, document downloading and reviewing, e-mail services etc. With these added functionalities comes reduced battery life. For instance, to facilitate the use of these functions, screens of these telephone systems have been getting larger and larger. Consequently, more power is needed to illuminate the screens of these telephone systems contributing to reduced battery life.
In addition, these devices are being used more and more (both in frequency and length of time) to browse the Web, to read, draft and send e-mail messages, to download/upload/review documents etc. Again, this equates to increased power consumption further contributing to reduced battery life.
The illumination of the screens of these telephone systems produces ambient light. This may be unwanted in certain situations. For example, a user attending a meeting in a darkened conference room may be using one of these devices to download a document that is pertinent to a topic of the meeting. When doing so, the ambient light emitted by the screen of the device may be distracting to others in the room.
Likewise, a patron of an arts performance in a darkened theatre may use one of these devices to access the Web to retrieve background information on an artist, for example. Again, the ambient light emitted by the screen of the device in use may be disturbing/distracting to other patrons in the theatre.
Virtually every device with a screen provides a means for increasing/decreasing screen illumination. However, this is generally a manual process that under certain conditions may not be available (e.g., when the device is undergoing a “text search” the function may be temporarily made unavailable). The manual use of this function can be rather tedious.
For example, suppose a user would like the light output lowered when the device is performing a task (e.g., downloading a document from the Web) in a darkened room and back to its original intensity afterward for legibility. First, the user will have to access the Web and start the downloading process. Then, the user has to access the function on the telephone system to decrease the light output. After the document has been downloaded (a time that the user may not always be aware of or may not properly anticipate), the user has to re-access the function to increase the light output back to its original intensity. This requires a lot of time and attention of the user for a rather mundane task.
Another method that has been used is to use a light sensor to constantly sample current ambient light and to automatically adjust the brightness of the screen accordingly. This method is used by the Hewlett Packard™ IPAQ™ Pocket PC (Hewlett Packard is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, Corp and IPAQ is a trademark of Compact, Corp.). But, as in the case of the manual process above, a user may not know or properly anticipate when the device has terminated a task.
A further method that has been used is to use a magnetic strip to signal to the device that the screen is no longer needed to be illuminated. For example, Blackberry™ (a wireless data hand-held device marketed and sold by Canadian-based Research in Motion, LTD) uses a magnetic strip in its holster such that when placed therein, the device knows to automatically shut off its display. Again, a user may not know or properly anticipate when the device has terminated a task.
Note that when the user does not properly anticipate the time at which the device has finished a task, the user may continually check the device to ascertain so. The constant checking of the device may be a great source of annoyance to others.
Thus, what is needed is an apparatus, method and system of providing auto-dimming and state transition signal functionality to these telephone systems. The auto-dimming functionality helps increase battery life while minimizes the amount of distraction/disturbance to which others may be subjected when these devices are in use. The state transition signal lets a user know when the device has terminated a task.